Prison Pit
- Characters
- Prison Library
- Logs 1
- Logs 2
- Jailbreak
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Central Complex, shelnat island, Inversar, 13:30 local time 156/1106
The two security guards, still reeling from the revelation of their boss's treachery, informed the cons that Dexter had left first thing that morning in the security speeder to patrol the starport region. Alice folded her arms. "So - we go and find him, and poke him with sharp sticks," she suggested. Martha picked up the radio mike and relayed the information to Stubbins back in Beidness. As she did so, Gripper started handing 'saur prods around to the others and Manx took Anil Singhvi by one arm."You're coming too, it's your fault as much as Harohi's," he said. Bundling into the speeder, Manx took the controls and sent it sleeting through the jungle towards the 'port.
Spaceport, Shelnat Island, Inversar, 14:08 local time 156/1106
A few minutes later they were sliding to a halt in the spaceport car park. The facility looked much as it had when they'd last been here; a huge circular concrete slab marked with white lines and (inactive) beacon lights, flanked on each side by hangers large enough for a small starship. A ten-foot chainlink fence ran right around the perimeter, undamaged as far as they could see. Four of the robotic defence turrets humped uselessly at the corners of the fences, like everything else powered down and inoperative. A large gate opened from the pad to the car park, guarded by a small hut for the gateman. Cameras topped the fence poles but they too were off.
At the other side of the car park was Dexter's speeder with its' security markings. Alice lifted her rifle. "Don't want him getting away," she commented, and fired a RAM at it. The HEAP round smashed almost all the way through the car's thin metal before it exploded, blasting the car to bits in a boiling fireball; very spectacular, very satisfying, very noisy.
The blast was clearly heard by something. A deafening roar came from the hanger on their left, followed by a succession of very loud crashes and thumps. From the smashing and clattering accompanying them, this was not the sound of something in a cage, but something unhappy loose in a building. After a few moments the noises died away, which was somehow worse. Manx slid down in the driving seat of the speeder until his eyes were just visible over the dashboard. Alice gazed at the undamaged perimeter fence and hanger doors. "How did he get it it in there?" she mused. "Prods!" chorused just about everyone else.
No-one else seemed keen to go first, so Gripper slung a prod over his shoulder, picked up his rifle and walked over to the security hut. A quick bash with his rifle butt took the simple lock out, and he made his way through the kiosk and onto the landing pad. Martha followed, lurking just inside the fence by the door of the security hut as Gripper advanced on the hanger.
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About ten yards from the doors, Gripper stopped short as the folding steel door began to open. How it was doing so, given the lack of power, was a question he shelved for more urgent considerations, such as the armoured figure leaning through it and raising a gauss rifle. He was caught in the open, and even a dive to the ground wasn't likely to save him from being drilled. He was just tensing to throw himself prone when a RAM grenade hurtled past him to strike Dexter in the chest. The missile tore through the man's battledress as if it were paper and exploded inside his ribcage. The hard outer shell of his powered armour compressed the explosion enough to blast him physically to bits, and head, arms, legs and torso went in all directions. She gritted her teeth in annoyance - the only set of battledress on the damn island, and she'd just destroyed it! Gripper glanced back at Martha and nodded in appreciation - then his attention was snatched back to the hanger as the snarling and roaring restarted and came rapidly nearer.
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With a terrible smashing and squealing of tearing metal a massive reptilian form tore its way through the hanger door. It was slightly similar to the Vr's but much, much bigger. Gripper dropped his rifle and swung the prod off his back, hefting it in front of him, as the monster tore free and set off at a charge straight for him. By sheer size it covered a lot of ground but it was soon moving faster than a man could run, bent low so its' massive jaws were level with the human it faced. Gripper stood his ground, waiting until it was a couple of yards away, then triggered the prod and dived sideways towards safety. Everything went wrong with amazing speed after that.
The prod crackled as the energy burst released, but apart from a slight flinch the charging horror didn't seem to be affected. Maybe it was moving too fast to stop in any case; certainly it was too fast for Gripper. He'd barely moved when it seized him by the right shoulder with its' immense jaws, bitten down hard, and shaken him like a terrier with a rat. Everything blurred for Gripper as he cartwheeled through the air to crash to the concrete ahead and to the right of the snarling creature. The impact knocked all the breath out of him, but the eruption of pain was in his right shoulder; his whole right side felt wet and hot for some reason.
Martha snatched the moment as Gripper was removed from her line of fire to shoot a second grenade at the rampaging dinosaur. Tearing in through the skinweave at the belly, the RAM round smashed into the beast's spine level with its' hips and blew a sizable portion of its' backbone clean out of the back of its' body. Its' legs collapsed, and it crashed to the ground. Unable to reach her, it was still within a lunge of Gripper. Mortally wounded, it fought on, tearing at him with its' fangs. Something seemed to be wrong with Gripper's right arm; he couldn't move it - must be broken, he thought. Frantically he clawed his gausspistol out of its' holster with his other hand and emptied it almost blindly into the massive head that filled his entire vision. An entire clip of needle bullets slammed into the 'saur's face, some deflected by the armour but some going inside its' mouth to smash the hinge of the great jaw. Unable to bite him, it sagged down, and Martha finished it with a burst of gaussrifle fire as she arrived at Gripper's side.
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Kneeling next to him she swore savagely. His entire right arm was simply gone, bitten off raggedly at the shoulder, and blood was pouring out onto the concrete. She unpacked his medical kit and worked quickly, using his laser scalpel to roughly cauterize the arteries to prevent him bleeding to death. Surgery, prosthetics or regrowth could undo the damage she was doing later; but he'd die now if she didn't. Gripper was remaining consciousby a mixture of native toughness and bloodymindedness, and gasped a request for her to pass him his rifle, which he gripped in his remaining hand like a dying knight's sword as she worked.
Alice, assuming that the two had the 'saur under control, had loped past the battle towards the hanger. There was no certainty that Dexter had been alone, and the others would be vulnerabe to any waiting sniper while preoccupied with the beast. Cautiously, she looked around the edge of the door.
 DM Note: Maser communicators use tight-beam microwaves and are almost impossible to intercept. . |
The hanger was unoccupied, and apart from some spare parts, tools and equipment - most now smashed by the gilasaur - nearly empty. A pool of light attracted her attention. A single portable battery-powered lamp stood on a table, beside which were two holdalls. One contained clothes, personal possesions and a wallet - a thousand creds or so, a Tallis ID for John Dexter and a Viator one for Dario Gabon (ahhhhh!). The other held four gauss rifle clips, two data slugs and a handcomputer. The latter was displaying a remote status monitor for a maser landing beacon, which was transmitting skywards from somewhere near, and had a timer counting down to something; whatever it was, it was due in another fifty minutes. Alice took this second bag and went to find the others. "I think company is coming," she announced.
Martha unpacked Minion, which she'd last used to control the robots, and Alice plugged one of the slugs into it. There was a brief pause, and then Minion spoke. If an AI could sound tense and worried, then he did. I suggest you take that out, he said abruptly. "Why?" asked Martha. Because it is trapped, said Minion flatly. Any lesser computer would already have been scrammed. Alice pulled the slug. "What was on it?" she asked. I do not know, answered Minion. It would have gone off if I had accessed it. Alice dug in a pocket and brought out two spare dataslugs, from when Martha was creating the sales pitch. "Can you fake something like the Terbium research?" she asked. I have all the research, including several failed attempts. I can put one of those on. "Perfect," approved Martha.
Manx appeared through the doors in the speeder with Gripper in the passenger seat, and he and Alice set to the grisly task of dragging the sundered bits of Dexter into the hanger out of sight. "Nothing out of the ordinary.. except ten tons of dead dinosaur and a lake of blood."
Alice crossed the pad to the other hanger, where she cracked the door six inches and set herself up with her rifle to cover the landing zone. Gripper was made as comfortable as possible seated on a crate at the back of Dexter's hanger, rifle to hand, while Manx and Martha lurked at the unfortunate Dexter's post next to the main door to await developments.
Spaceport, Shelnat Island, Inversar, 15:00 local time 156/1106
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As the timer expired, a vehicle came into view flying low across the ocean. Rapidly approaching, it slowed and dropped to the pad. Martha swallowed. This was going to be less easy than she expected; it was a military-grade dropship, an Empress unless she missed her guess, able to hold between ten and twenty fully-tooled up marines. As she watched, the rear door fell and men in combat armour began to deploy. They were professionals, if not Corps; angles were covered and firezones overlapped as they spread out. Aboard the dropship, the crew were visible on the bridge working efficiently, clearly readying to dust off again as soon as possible. Above them, some kind of energy weapon revolved in a cupola, controlled from inside.
A faint noise attracted Martha's attention. Looking down, she realized it was coming from the helmet of Dexter's destroyed battledress. Picking it up, she shook the head out and held it near to her head. "Come on ladies! We're on a tight schedule here!" said a brisk voice, and she realized she was hearing the RT of the troops outside. Making a note of the frequency, she tuned her own helmet radio to it and spoke. "Please identify yourselves, gentlemen?" she said.
The response was immediate. From merely alert, the troops went to a battle-ready status in a snap, rifles up, searching for targets, as thelieutenant rapped back "Who are you? Come out with your hands up!"
Martha's voice was aplogetic. "You can understand why we don't want to do that," she said, "you've got fifteen armed men out there." The lieutenant's voice was faintly amused. "It's because I've got fifteen men out here that you'll do as you're told. Put down your weapons - I know things aren't what they should be, our sensors picked up the destruction of whatever you blew up in the car park - and we know about the dinosaurs. We have the equipment to deal with them the same as we can deal with you," and he hefted his own rifle slightly. Alice - out of the radio loop - very nearly shot him on the spot; but he didn't fire and she kept her crosshairs on his helmet.
She did have a link to Tallis HQ. Calling the code she'd been given for VP Stubbins, she got through almost instantly. "What's going on?" he asked. A rushing noise in back of his voice suggested to Alice that he was with the incoming rescue. She summarized, ending with "What's your ETA?" "Half an hour," said Stubbins, "just a second!" There was a pause, then she heard faintly "Faster, flyboy! We got a party to catch!" He came back on the line. "Hold them up and keep them talking," he said.
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Martha and Manx, meanwhile, had been negotiating with Lieutenant Barker. A mixture of Manx' strange, magnetic facility with bending crowds of people to his will and Martha's enormous experience with conning the military mind had managed to win a stand-off, with Barker withdrawing his men to level with the dropship and walking forward with one man to meet with Martha. The three were standing about thirty feet apart, talking, each with their rifle held across their body; handy but not immediately threatening.
"So," said Barker, "what are you going to sell me? Gabon was to deliver some information in return for a bonus and extraction. I assume you don't want the extraction, but do you have the goods he was bringing?" Martha nodded, and very slowly drew out the slug Minion had prepared. Barker caught it, and slotted it into a hand computer, eyeing the results though Martha was quite sure he wasn't taking his attention off her for long to do so. "This looks all right," he said, pocketing it, "Where's the dino data?" Dino data? thought Martha. "This is all there was," she said simply. "Fair enough," said Barker, "this is the important bit. Gabon's bonus was to be KCr100; I'll pay half that for half the deliverables." Martha shrugged. Fifty thou for half a day's work wasn't bad. "OK" she said. Barker produced a cashcard, adjusted it briefly, and lobbed it over. "It's been a pleasure," he said, turning to go. Alice's voice crackled in Martha's ear. "Ten minutes - keep 'em talking!"
Martha's eye fell on the pool of gore on the landing pad and an idea struck. "Have you got a medic? My friend needs medical attention." Barker shook his head. "That's really your problem," he said. Manx spoke up. "We may not be on the same side," he said, broadcasting generally, "but surely you can spare five or ten minutes for this poor unfortunate soul in his pain?" He continued in the same vein, adroitly working the subject around to a general declaration of fellow-feeling and compassion that softened the hearts of even these hardened corptroopers. As he wove his spell, all around the pad the Viator troopers' shoulders slumped, their feet scuffed the concrete in awkwardness as they found themselves agreeing with what he said almost against their wills. Barker shrugged. "Okay," he said, "Jansen, get in there and see what you can do for him. You've got ten minutes and then we lift." The named man scuttled across the pad and into the hanger.
Gripper was still hanging onto conciousness grimly, but the relief of the skilled work of the Viator medic added to the extra dose of painkillers the man shot into him was too much, and he blurred away into oblivion. As his eyes closed, outside four armoured dropships marked in Tallis insignia were breaking the clouds on a direct descent to the landing pad - and Alice pulled her trigger.
Session Date: 17th August 2011 (230/-2507 Imperial) |
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